December 16, 2012 -- VenezuelAnalysis -- With all votes counted to the point of results being irreversible,
the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) has won 20 states, and the
opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) coalition, three states in the December 16 regional elections.

The opposition lost control of Zulia, Tachira, Carabobo,
Monagas and Nueva Esparta, but retained Amazonas and Miranda and Lara
states.

In Miranda, one of the key states at stake, contested by PSUV ex-vice-president Elias Jaua, and the opposition presidential candidate and
current governor of Miranda, Henrique Capriles, the opposition won with
50% to Jaua’s 46%.

In Bolivar state, where the results were very close, the opposition
candidate Andres Velasquez is refusing to recognise his defeat and has
called on locals to “defend” his “victory”.

Venezuelans and residents chose 23 state
governors and 237 state legislators. The results of the state
legislative voting have yet to be announced.

In the 2008 regional elections the PSUV won 17 of the 22 states being contested.

For state by state results see below.

Participation levels and voting mood

Turnout was just under 54% , though this varied markedly in different
regions. In the 2008 state elections (which were slightly different to
these ones in that they also included mayoral elections) participation
rate was 65.45% of registered voters.

“In general you can see an environment of apparent calm, with some
levels of abstention that have been higher than we expected”, Leonardo
Briceno, a teacher from Merida state told Venezuelanalysis.com’s Ewan
Robertson.

The voting mood in many states has been reported to be peaceful, but
somewhat apathetic, a contrast to the usual joyful ambience that has
marked Venezuelan elections over the last thirteen years.

PSUV leader Jorge Rodriguez said that the “popular” or poorer areas had longer queues and higher participation than other areas.

The head of the operational strategic command for the Bolivarian
Armed Forces, Wilmer Barrientos, informed press that the voting process
had been carried out with “absolutely normality”, and that only 19
people have been detained, and of those, six people arrested for
electoral crimes.

There were 12,748 voting booths, with a total of 36.220 voting
machines distributed among them, and 17,421,946 eligible voters, 186,036
of which are foreign born residents.

Venezuela: Campaigns for regional polls were hard fought

By Ryan Mallett-Outtrim

December 4, 2012 -- Green Left Weekly -- Despite securing a comfortable victory in the October 2012 presidential
election, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) is set for a
harder struggle in crucial regional elections on December 16.

However, even opposition polls show PSUV is likely to keep control of
most governorships. The issue is whether the opposition Democratic Unity
Roundtable (MUD) can win or hold key seats, or the PSUV can build on
the momentum from the presidential vote and important social gains.

Chavez easily won the October 7 president elections after impressive
social gains for the poor majority as a result of the revolution his government leads. Chavez won the popular vote over the
right-wing opposition in 22 out of 24 states, but many of the votes for
governorships, mayors and municipal candidates look set to be closely
fought on December 16.

The high support for Chavez does not necessarily extend to others in
his party. Participatory grassroots democracy is one of the principles
of the revolution, championed by Chavez, but some pro-Chavez
office-bearers have been criticised being bureaucratic, isolated from
the grassroots or hostile to the goal of popular democracy. The
candidates for December 16 were hand-picked by PSUV leaders, and not all
candidates are trusted or supported by the ranks of the Chavista
movement.

The US-backed opposition has sought to exploit frustrations at
inefficiency, corruption and bureaucracy that have undermined the
revolution's popular programs.

The PSUV won 17 governorships in the 2008 election, but the opposition won some key states.

However, since then, the revolution has advanced on a range of fronts
― such as housing, efficiency in the social missions and land reform.
Crime and the judicial system remain a source of popular frustration.

Many of the 23 state governor positions and 229 positions in state
legislative councils are hotly contested between the PSUV and
opposition, particularly in states such as Miranda, Zulia and Merida.

Polls remain split on the outcome in the key battleground state of
Miranda, where former PSUV vice-president Elias Jaua will go up against
incumbent governor Henrique Capriles Radonski.

Miranda is the second most populous state, and includes key sections
of the capital Caracas. Opposition candidate Radonski defeated Chavista
incumbent Diosdado Cabello, the PSUV vice-president often identified by
grassroots Chavistas as a figurehead for more right-wing, bureaucratic
forces in the party.

In recent weeks, Jaua's campaign has been focused on crime ― a key focus of Capriles' failed presidential bid in October.

Jaua has proposed more cooperation between the state and national
governments in tackling Miranda's severe crime rates, an initiative
opposed by Capriles during his time as governor.

Communist Party of Venezuela

Meanwhile, in the states of Merida, Amazonas, Portuguesa and Bolivar,
the PSUV will not only face MUD and independents, but also its ally,
the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV). Although far smaller than the
PSUV, the PCV is the second largest party that supports Chavez.

PCV leader Douglas Gomez has told Venezuelan media that PCV
candidates in these states are not “candidates of Chavez, but they are
candidates of the revolutionary process...”

Venezuela Analysis said in the state of Merida, PSUV candidate Alexis
Ramirez is “relatively unknown”. But the candidate supported by the
PCV, Florencio Porras, has also been criticised. Venezuela Analysis said
the two offer revolutionaries a “choice between two bads” for the left.

In Bolivar, the PCV has responded to widespread criticism of the PSUV candidate by registering their own, Manuel Arciniega.

The PSUV governor of Bolivar and candidate for December 16, Francisco
Rangel Gomez, has been criticised for anti-worker policies, including
working against the development of workers' control in the state, in
conflict with government policy.

In 2008, Rangel Gomez backed the management of the Sidor steel firm
against striking workers – and used National Guard and local police to
attack protesting workers. The dispute ended when Chavez intervened on
the side of workers and nationalised the steel plant.

Gomez runs a powerful political machine and enjoys support in the
polls. But his PCV opponent has gained ground since coming fourth in the
2008 regional elections in Bolivar.

Critics also claim Gomez is allied with reformists and members of the
old union bureaucracy who oppose progressive labour measures supported
by the PSUV nationally.

Despite some tensions over candidates, Chavez publicly expressed
confidence that “the revolution will triumph in the vast majority of
states in Venezuela”.

The election comes amid a national discussion and debate initiated by
the PSUV of the government's proposed Socialist Plan of the Nation for
2013-19. Mass assemblies and other forums have been taking place
nationwide to discuss radical proposals for the socialist transition.

The results will have an impact ― a strengthening of the pro-Chavez
forces will be a further endorsement of the socialist path the
government is setting out. A further strengthening of the opposition,
however, will make it harder to implement progressive, pro-people
measures, giving greater institutional weight to those who oppose them.

Venezuela’s state elections: When winning comes before revolution

By Tamara Pearson, Merida

December 12, 2012 -- VenezuelAnalysis -- “We’ll deal with [the PSUV's problems] when the state elections are over”, a comrade said to me. “Ah, but then there’s the mayoral elections in April”, I replied. Debate within and criticism of the PSUV and its current state
election campaign, as well as proper grassroots involvement, would be put
off and put off, because in this incredibly democratic country there
is always some kind of election coming up. Yet for how long will such
sacrifices be made in the name of defeating the capitalist opposition?

Aram Aharonian, writing in Rebelion, was right when he argued that the December 16, 2012, state elections
aren’t just “one election, they’re 23 different elections”, because each
state has its own socioeconomic characteristics and different types of
candidates running -- from bureaucrats, to an Indigenous minister, to
the military, to the well known and the unknown.

However, all of the 23 PSUV candidates were chosen by President Hugo
Chavez and the national PSUV executive. The PSUV is a national
“machine”, as we are prone to call it here, and despite some regional
differences, its state campaigning has been conducted according to
national lines and a national strategy. So, although this article will
focus on experiences in Merida state, the problems discussed of treating
PSUV members like voters rather than activists, of isolating political
parties and movements that are not aligned to the PSUV and so on, are
problems that are across the board, and though more pertinent in this
election campaign, can be said to be general problems in the PSUV.

Chavez’s candidates

Not only one of the main election slogans (here in Merida: “Alexis
Ramirez, candidate of Chavez!”), the idea that the PSUV governor
candidates are associated with, and chosen by, Chavez is a key political
strategy the PSUV has been using over the last few months.

It’s a stance that suggests the party leadership are unconfident
that their candidates have merit on their own, and also that the PSUV’s
objectives of socialism, justice, economic and land reform and so on,
have merits on their own. It’s a dependence on the guaranteed victory
the character of Chavez brings, but it has also been used as a way to
make the PSUV the only “real” Chavista party, and to delegitimise other
revolutionary, pro-Chavez organisations and parties that haven’t
dissolved into the PSUV, such as the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV),
the Tupumaros movement, the Great Patriotic Pole
(GPP) and even unions.

As a member of the PSUV national executive, and also head of the national assembly, Diosdado Cabello told the press,
“Chavez has just one candidate in each state. We can’t impose any
candidate on our allies, but what we ask of them is that they don’t say
they are candidates of Chavez, because they aren’t.” He also made the
exaggerated claim that “socialist candidates [PSUV] will win in all 23
states on Sunday”.

The tactic aims at preventing a divided vote; as Chavez said before
he left for Cuba on Sunday, “Unity, Unity, Unity”, yet it is a unity
that excludes anyone who isn’t in the PSUV.

And then there is the big question of why, during a revolution, are
these candidates Chavez’s candidates and not the people’s candidates?
For Merida state, Chavez and the PSUV national executive, based far away
in Caracas, picked the unknown Alexis Ramirez for the candidate for
governor. Then they chose Rafael Ramirez, energy minister and president
of the state oil company PDVSA and not at all familiar with Merida, an agricultural state. There was no consultation with the PSUV membership. While perhaps primary elections are not the best road,
since many registered members of the PSUV actually support the
opposition, there was no reason not to call state-wide meetings of the
active membership of the PSUV and even other organisations, to both
elect candidates and decide on campaigning platform, and strategy.

'Loyalty' to a person rather than a program or proposals

Two more words or slogans that have been thrown around a lot during
the PSUV campaigning, both at the state and national levels, are
“loyalty” and “discipline”. Yet the discipline doesn’t refer to good,
serious, revolutionary organisation, nor to waging a hard campaign, nor
to combating bureaucracy and corruption, but rather to unquestioning
support for the handpicked candidates.

Here in Merida, we were given Alexis Ramirez, a young geographer, a
local legislator, who in the last five years I have never seen in any of
the political marches or rallies or events, or even when Chavez spoke
here a few weeks before the presidential elections. There is also
evidence that Ramirez committed serious acts of corruption as a
legislator, and it is felt that he is largely a puppet and that there
will be other people behind the scenes, people we don’t know, governing
for him.

One comrade said to me, “Those who don’t support Alexis [Ramirez],
are called traitors... I have to be 'loyal' to Chavez by lying to him and
telling him his candidate is the best, no I can’t do that. This
electoral campaign has been about persecution and fear."

The comrade said he will vote for Florencio Porras, the candidate of the
PCV. Porras, who was governor of Merida from 2000-2008 and
is “revolutionary light” (that is, a pro-Chavez reformist) will likely
get a significant vote, though he won’t win. PSUV members have stuck up
posters around the city calling Porras a traitor. One poster has
modified the PCV’s symbol, the red rooster, to be a rooster with
crutches, labelled a gallo cojo or lame rooster, a message that is
disrespectful of people with disabilities. Another PSUV poster shows
Lester Rodriguez, the opposition candidate, taking off a mask that is
Porras’ face.

The PSUV communication committee has also posted graphics around
Facebook with quips such as “You say you’re more revolutionary than me,
but you’re campaigning for a candidate that’s not one of Chavez’s?” and
“In battle, division is betrayal”.

Even though Chavez has gone to great pains to encourage and
legitimise criticism and self-criticism and the need to denounce of
bureaucracy and corruption, clearly any PSUV bureaucrats hoping to be in
power are not going to do the same.

Clubs of friends within the PSUV leadership

Unfortunately, for many of the PSUV’s candidates, winning the
elections comes before real revolution (participation, grassroots
organisation, transparency, accountability etc.) because that is what is
more important to them. They are using the PSUV to gain positions of
power and money.

The blind “loyalty” and “discipline” they promote benefits them.
Further, once PSUV members go along with such loyalty, refusing to
criticise, they are then taken for granted and used by the PSUV
bureaucracy, which will not feel pressured to listen to them.

In many revolutionary parties around the world, especially, but not
exclusively in situations of repression, a kind of loyalty towards the
leadership is called for. But it is conditional on active members
electing that leadership, or in cases of repression, at least knowing
and trusting that leadership. That is not the case here. In Merida we
did not choose the regional leadership (nor the national one for that
matter), we don’t know them, they never organise mass meetings with us,
nor are they accountable or transparent in anyway. The communication
committee puts out many press releases promoting the party, the
government, and its achievements, which is good, but it never informs
the membership of who its leadership is, why or how they were chosen,
what decisions have been taken and why, or what the state of finances
are.

Had we been able to choose our candidate (and our regional
leadership), it is much more likely we would have chosen someone who is a
true activist, and who we support and are willing to campaign for. Of
the 23 state candidates, it’s possible that in some cases we would have
chosen the same candidate as the national executive – Elias Jaua,
running in Miranda state for example, is well respected and trusted.
But the clubs of friends, the invisible power groups within the PSUV
bureaucracy, who scheme and manoeuvre so that their own people are where
they want them, would not support that.

One woman wrote on Alexis Ramirez’s Facebook page,
“Alexis, I support Chavez all the way, but this time I won’t accept
impositions because I don’t consider myself anyone’s sheep, and if today
we accept this selection of you ... later we’ll be exposed to similar
eventualities, so I don’t support you... let the PSUV know that the
people shouldn’t be treated in such a way, with such threats.”

A few people have suggested that perhaps if the PSUV loses these
elections in Merida, “they’ll learn”, yet this is not the first time
they have made the mistake of hand picking regional candidates from far
away Caracas. It is not in their interest to learn.

A choice: guarantee financial resources, or guarantee a process of participation

Another comrade, a member of my communal council, said to me, “We
have to vote for Alexis [Ramirez] because we need to keep the government
in power, so that we can guarantee [financial] resources for Merida.”

We’ve also all been receiving pro-Alexis campaign messages to our
phones, one of which read, “Alexis is the guarantee of coordinated team
work with the national government and local governments.”

Another young comrade, a public sector worker but also a dedicated
fighter, argued that revolutionaries should vote for Alexis because,
“it’s a very critical situation... we have to defend the process, we
have spent so many decades in misery, we can’t make mistakes, we can’t
go back to that”. He made a very good point; it would be terrible if after 12 years
of reformist, but pro-Chavez governors, Merida were to go to the
opposition candidate, Lester Rodriguez, who supported the violent and
armed opposition while he was rector of the University of Los Andes
(ULA), among many other things.

Yet how much should we sacrifice, in
terms of debate and participation, supposedly in order to prevent the
opposition coming into power? What are we defending exactly, if we’re
campaigning for anti-worker politicians such as the PSUV’s candidate for
Bolivar, Francisco Rangel? How will Alexis help the revolution deepen,
if he’s not even accountable to the people? He can guarantee financial
resources from the national government, but he can’t guarantee
participatory democracy.

As a group of us went visiting the neighbours in our community,
talking to the youth to see if they would get involved in an alternative
cultural activity, one young female comrade expressed her exasperation,
“There is no revolution here... where is the popular power? They don’t
listen to us, there’s no organisation.”

She was frustrated that day, and I think she knows that there is
indeed a revolution going on, if a problematic one. The point is, even if having
Alexis as governor guarantees that a certain amount of resources do get
spent on the people rather than diverted towards underhanded things as would be the case under the opposition, that is more or less
meaningless if the people aren’t listened to and don’t have a say on
just where those resources go.

Alexis has talked very little about his state government plans should he be elected, but his proposal is available here.
It’s based on the country-wide socialist plan 2013-2019 that Chavez
campaigned on, which is very good: education, health, community-based culture, community-generated alternative news, and so on, but
which also means that it is not tailored to the specific regional needs
of Merida. If he had listened, we could have told him that we also need
pubic toilets, and to close the centre of the city to the unmoving and
contaminating traffic, we need help in setting up community-based
recycling systems and more urban agriculture, we need a drug
rehabilitation centre, and so on. Had his proposal for government come
from us and been more concrete and related to our specific reality, that
would be another reason people would have been much more motivated to
campaign and vote for the PSUV.

Elections aren’t revolution

Alexis and his PSUV team have been campaigning hard: there are
posters and banners everywhere, he’s done rallies and house visits in
all the parroquias of the state, he had a mass rally in Merida in the
Plaza de Toros (Bull fighting plaza), and he’s spoken at meetings of
various specific sectors of society, such as teachers, transport
workers and the Lawyers’ Front.

But the campaign hasn’t had the same sort of energy, passion and
daily street presence as during the campaign for Chavez for president a
few months ago. Nor is it that different, in essence, to a typical
election campaign in a country like Australia, with fairly meaningless
slogans, posters with just the candidate’s face, red t-shirts that say
“Alexis", and relating to people as voters more than anything else.

In Miranda, revolutionaries seem to be a bit more inspired with Jaua,
offering an exciting alternative to the abandonment and lack of governance,
especially of the poorer areas of Miranda, by Henrique Capriles, who
recently ran for president for the MUD opposition.

Back then, Capriles made a great effort to resemble Chavez, taking on
revolutionary jargon – talking about “justice for the poor” and about
“improving the missions”, because he knew how strong Chavez and his
cause are. Now, Capriles has gone back to his old self, claiming that
Jaua’s proposals were written in Cuba, saying, “We aren’t going to hand
Miranda over to Castro-communism.”

Here in Merida, MUD's Lester Rodriguez has hardly done a thing. In fact,
some of us are wondering if he’s still off holidaying in Europe. His
team has put up a few posters with the banal and pathetic slogan of
“Proudly Merideñan”, and he seems to have put out a few press releases,
suggesting that the PSUV gets its funding from PDVSA, but that’s about
it.

Had things have been done differently, as I’ve outlined, we could
have won easily in Merida. But despite associating Alexis with Chavez,
most people are pretty clear that they are not the same, and some people
feel that the PSUV doesn’t represent the sort of revolution we want.

The electoral battles have to be fought to protect and safeguard the
revolution, and even at times propel it, but many PSUV “leaders” don’t
understand, or don’t want to understand, that revolution is when the
people organise and take power in their communities, workplaces and at
the state and national levels too. A revolution is not unelected
bureaucrats signing and stamping papers in air-conditioned offices,
with the rest of us wearing a red t-shirt with the name of one of those
bureaucrats, and then we vote for them.

Giving so much importance to these elections, calling them
“critical”, reinforces the idea that we should expect such people to do
everything for us. In reality, if the opposition wins Merida state, and
any other states, that’s a good reason to deepen the revolution,
distribute more resources directly to the people’s organisations; the
communal councils, communes, workers’ councils, the movements, the
Social Production Companies (EPSs) and so on. That, and involving those
organisations in deciding where and how resources are distributed, is
revolution. Gradually taking power away from the structurally corrupt
state governments who lack accountability towards or consultation of the
grassroots, is necessary.

Our disorganised criticism

Despite the current climate of labelling anyone who criticises
Alexis a “traitor”, there has been a lot of debate and open criticism
among revolutionaries in Merida – a positive thing which shows the
development and maturity of many of those who are most active. Many
people will vote for Porras -- more as a statement of criticism than
support for him particularly. Many others have written articles for
alternative media site Aporrea expressing discontent.

Unfortunately, for now, such criticism is disorganised, and hence isn’t being converted into strong pressure.

We’re still learning and “rehearsing” revolution, as one writer, Jose Duque,
put it, “like a one year old learning to walk and falling over every
half metre”. It is natural that those with power resist change, and it’s
okay and useful that there are problems and obstacles for us to face.
As we fight them we learn, we become stronger and the revolution becomes
harder to defeat.

Looking at the behind the scenes dynamics of the PSUV like this,
things can seem quite dire and worrying. But it’s important to remember
how complex this revolution is, and that in this analysis I’ve just
examined one aspect of it.

On the other hand there is the urban
agriculture springing up everywhere due to grassroots initiative and
government support, there are prisoners learning to make documentaries,
there’s the free dental care three blocks from my house, there’s the
youth rapping about climate change and anti consumerism in our local
plaza last Sunday, there’s the kids in the barrio becoming dignified
through democratic, alternative education, and much more.

The levels of general political interest and understanding are
increasing, and the courage, the fight the grassroots have, its resolve,
is inspiring. These things are part of the antidote to the sour elements
in the PSUV.

Venezuela Analysis needs your support

Venezuela Analysis journalist Tamara Pearson wrote
on the urban garden in Merida pictured above: "With the help of the
government, our community council La Columna began a project of urban
agriculture so that we can grow food free of agro-chemicals in a way
that doesn't damage the land, recycle organic waste in our composter,
contribute to national food sovereignty, and start to break down
alienation in our community." Photo by Tamara Pearson.

VenezuelAnalysis is
the main English-language website, read around the world, providing
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